True Postscript printers?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ajanta
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A

Ajanta

Based on features, price etc I am leaning towards purchasing Brother
5250DN monochrome laser printer. It comes with Brother's postscript
emulation.

Beofre I take the final nonrefundable plunge, just how important it is
to have true adobe ps in your printer? What is the starting price for
such models?

Many thanks.
 
Ajanta said:
Based on features, price etc I am leaning towards purchasing Brother
5250DN monochrome laser printer. It comes with Brother's postscript
emulation.

Beofre I take the final nonrefundable plunge, just how important it is
to have true adobe ps in your printer? What is the starting price for
such models?

Many thanks.
Click to expand...

I have had a Lexmark Optra R printer for many years. It is PS2,
but not Adobe. Over the life of the printer (I still use it), I have
found a small number of PS bugs that don't show up in other PS
printers. Before the last bug, Lexmark was always very good about
sending me a new PS SIMM that would fix the problem. The last time,
the printer was so old that they just did not support it any more. So,
I'm stuck with this particular bug. IMHO, Lexmark provided great
support for the printer, beyond the warranty period. But there came a
time when they had "moved on", and didn't support it any more. I think
you will find that this is true for any vendor.

I expect that Adobe PS printers have bugs sometimes, and I suspect
that getting them fixed is more of a vendor issue than an Adobe issue.
As an earlier post from another person pointed out, a bug in an Adobe
PS product may affect more printers, and may be worked around (avoided)
by commercial SW, whereas a bug in a more obscure PS interpreter may
not merit the effort to create a workaround. So, if you're using
commerical SW, you might be safer with an Adobe PS printer.

For my second laser, Adobe wasn't a requirement, but I did view it
as a benefit (a "comfort" feature ?). I did try all of the test cases
that I'd accumulated from my experience with the Lexmark. It was a
requirement that the next printer must work properly with each of my
testcases. FWIW, I tried HP, Minolta, and Xerox, and all of them
properly processed the PS files. There were differences in output
quality, and that was the major factor in my decision.

I think that trying out the printer is more valuable than comparing
the source of the PS interpreter. If you've tested lots of PS files
(preferably from different tools), and you like the output, then you'll
probably be fine. My problems with my Lexmark came up when I tried
something new (printing a PDF that had lots of data on the page, and
using filters). I hadn't tried these before I purchased the printer,
and so I ran into the problems later.

Hope this helped,
Paul
 
HP's postscript is emulation -
Xerox's is true postscript

what I know on this subject
 
HP's postscript is emulation -
Xerox's is true postscript

what I know on this subject
Click to expand...

Xerox also makes some printers that use a Postscript clone and not
genuine Adobe Postscript. Eg. Phaser 3450, Phaser 6120. At the
prices these printers are sold at, they probably cannot afford to
include licensed Adobe Postscript.

AC
 
In comp.sys.mac.system Ajanta said:
Beofre I take the final nonrefundable plunge, just how important it is
to have true adobe ps in your printer? What is the starting price for
such models?
Click to expand...

For simple documents (text only, not too big) the clones are apt to be
pretty good. For complex graphics the "real thing" might be wise.

Have you considered the use of something like apsfilter, written
by (I think) Andreas Klemm?

Basically it bundles the Free Software Foundation's PostScript clone
interpreter with a bunch of printer drivers, all with a very smart
installation script.

It will likely require Mac OS X (or an Intel box running some flavor
of Linux or *BSD) but is a very inexpensive way to explore the world
of PostScript clones.

hth,

bob prohaska

inexpensive experiment.
 
Aawara said:
Xerox also makes some printers that use a Postscript clone and not
genuine Adobe Postscript. Eg. Phaser 3450, Phaser 6120. At the
prices these printers are sold at, they probably cannot afford to
include licensed Adobe Postscript.

AC
Click to expand...
OK - that is possible -
the Xerox printers I was looking at were:
4500, 6250, and 3500
 
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